In a development that has sent shockwaves through the transatlantic chattering classes, former US national security adviser John Bolton has pleaded guilty to something or other. The specifics, frankly, are as opaque as the gin in a Soho speakeasy, but the charge sheet reportedly includes: being a warmonger, having a moustache that looks like a startled caterpillar, and failing to prevent the January 6th insurrection. Actually, no, that last one is an Attenborough documentary waiting to happen. The actual charge is failing to register as a foreign agent for a book deal involving North Korean nukes, or something equally mundane.
Now, the UK intelligence community, those grey custodians of our damp island’s secrets, have issued a statement. Or rather, a raised eyebrow in the direction of Whitehall. The gist is this: Bolton’s plea highlights the ‘contrast with British standards’ of intelligence accountability. Our chaps, you see, never plead guilty. They retire on full pension to write memoirs about the time they mistook a KGB agent for a lady of the night in Brighton. But heavens, the cheek! The sheer un-British nous of admitting fault in public.
Let us dissect this with the surgical precision of a hungover coroner. Bolton, a man whose face appears to be carved from a block of pre-chewed ham, has spent decades advocating for regime change in places he cannot locate on a map. His guilty plea is the political equivalent of a tantrum in a toy shop. He has, in the grand tradition of American politics, discovered the concept of consequences. Meanwhile, our own intelligence services are busy monitoring the seditious tweets of retired colonels in Cheltenham.
The British establishment, naturally, is aghast. Not at the idea of a former national security adviser being a felon, but at the vulgarity of it all. We prefer our spies to be discreet, like a dodgy plumber who leaves a poem on the invoice. Bolton has ripped the veil of omertà and exposed the grubby underbelly of intelligence tradecraft. He has, in short, been a very naughty boy.
But the real story, the one that will be forgotten by teatime, is the gaping chasm between American and British approaches to state secrets. In the US, you leak, you get caught, you say sorry, you write a book. In the UK, you leak, you get a firm handshake, you are promoted to head of counter-espionage, and you write a book. The only difference is the timing. Bolton has performed a public service by demonstrating that even the most hawkish of hawks can be brought low by sheer, pig-headed stupidity.
So raise a glass of something cheap and British: John Bolton is a cautionary tale. But also a reminder that our own spies have the moral fibre of wet cardboard. They are not better; they are just better at hiding it. And that, dear readers, is the only standard that matters.
